Linda asked me about the state of desktop dictation technology. In particular, she asked me whether there was much difference between the latest version and earlier, cheaper ones. My knowledge of the area is out of date, so I thought I’d throw both the specific question and the broader subject of speech recognition out there for general discussion.

Here’s much of what I know or believe about speech recognition:

Most major independent commercial speech recognition efforts have wound up being merged into Nuance Communications. That goes for both desktop and server-side stuff. None was doing particularly well before its respective merger. Read more